(May 11, 2012 - by Ralph Kurtenbach) At Perry Beabout's workbench in Elkhart, Ind., you won't find him humming a classic rock tune, "If It Ain't Broke, Break It." Not at all.
When the song by Meat Loaf (Michael Lee Aday) became famous, Beabout was well into his engineering career. His musical interests don't tend to rock and roll's sometimes unsavory themes. Besides, to him meatloaf is well, meatloaf.
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Making repairs to FM transmitter for the CCM Radio station in Gliwice, Poland. |
Despite all of that, the HCJB Global engineer's teaching approach in the town of Gliwice, Poland, was to break a transmitter that had been purring along perfectly.
His goal wasn't to smash it to bits-only to leave it malfunctioning. Then to have Krzysztof, his Polish understudy in the April 10-14 training at partner network Radio CCM, diagnose what he'd put out of whack.
Of course "out of whack" isn't Beabout's way of saying it, at least in his report afterwards. "I installed various faults that caused the transmitter to not operate fully," was how the engineer described the learning exercise. "Krzysztof was then given the task to diagnose the nature of the problem and then to figure out what was causing the problem."
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Henryk Krol, CCM's chief executive officer, in his office. |
"This not only gave him a better understanding of how the transmitter worked," Beabout continued, "but also how to fix it when it did not work."
Radio CCM operates a network of six FM stations in southern Poland along with a website. The network has a total weekly audience of nearly 600,000.
"They seem to be doing a great job and use the radio to point people to the website for more information," Beabout observed. Launched in July 2008, the evangelistic website has netted a total of more than 1.3 million visitors. It's the Polish version of the website, www.lookingforgod.com. The ministry maintains 14 websites, including Jesus.net, and each site seeks to reach a different niche audience.
According to the ministry's May 2012 newsletter, more than 16 percent of the visitors (228,000) have filled out a form saying they have prayed to commit their lives to Christ. Of that group, some 24,000 have requested at least one of the follow-up options offered by the radio network.
Statistics are not Radio CCM's primary objective, according to Henryk Krol, chief executive officer of DEOrecordings, the network's parent ministry which began in 1975. But in perusing the email messages the network receives, he sees God at work as Radio CCM seeks to use innovations to make the gospel of Jesus Christ relevant to the Polish people.
The ministry also offers additional resources on Polish versions of two websites (www.christiantothecore.org and www.christianityexplored.org), and more than 100 volunteers have been trained to follow up with website visitors.
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Cancer survivor Liliana became an e-coach for Radio CCM. |
Liliana, a cancer survivor, was a new follower of Jesus when she made her way to one of the Radio CCM websites, where she was "e-coached" by an online counselor, Theresa. Liliana's questions were answered and she took the online Bible study, "Why Jesus?" Upon Theresa's suggestion, Liliana signed up for the Alpha course at a local evangelical church. The course focuses on the basics of the Christian faith.
"I learned to pray and read my Bible every day," she said. "My participation in Mass changed. It stopped being stiff and standardized and became a meeting with the living God. I was born again!"
Several years ago a listener wrote to say that a Sunday radio program "helped me to see our Lord in other people, situations and events that I experience." The listener specifically thanked a worker, Slawek, "for all he does on Radio CCM, pointing us to who (and not, what) should be the No. 1 priority in our lives."
Source: HCJB Global